I started reading and writing poetry as a teenager. Growing up in Southern California with few friends or a sense of community, I found solace in the power of the written word. I have since found community with my fellow writers, and I am grateful to remain involved. Recent work of mine has appeared or is forthcoming in Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, BIG HAMMER and San Pedro River Review, among other journals that have been very generous and supportive of my growth as a poet and writer.

Rico Suave

The tween ladies adored him, and the teachers gave out extra credit to him for being so handsome. He was a pillar of the sixth grade community, sweeping every awards assembly and holding doors open for the special needs kids. He was the only guy in our class who had a mustache, a sign of his advanced maturity. He also sat next to me,and he liked to whisper "you're nothing but white trash" over and over again into my ear before spitting directly into my face. I made feeble attempts to defend myself, but he always blinded me with his palm and said"talk to the hand," the teacher diffusing the situation by blaming it all on me. He complained to her that I forgot to wear deodorant, and the entire class burst into a kind of mocking laughter I never got used to, from the time he sucker punched me in the school cafeteria to the time he ruined my favorite polo shirt during a class pizza party after he smeared pink cupcake icing bedazzled by multicolored sprinkles against my chest, and their laughing faces poked voo doo doll holes that stung. Our teacher yelled at me yet again; the detention she gave me spelled out my ongoing social condemnation in blackboard chalk that was chipping away slowly into pulverized dust.

Originally Appeared in Nerve Cowboy

The Ice Men Cometh

my last surviving grandmother passedaway; I will never forget the time she took meto the church she worked for, a congregationpopulated by attractive television starschanting hallelujah and amenfor a huge spectacle involvingmuscular men throwing their unprotectedskulls into massive blocks of icetheir heads unscathed as theyannounced that Jesus had giventhem the power to crush the blocks of ice with their heads while at the sametime protecting them from Satan's evil,but probably not severe brain damageI think of the manic glee on mygrandmother's face as anotherhead split a block in twoand she whispered "praise the Lord"I really hope she's in the Heaven she had so muchfaith in, a faith I don't sharenot just because of my faith in science and the dangers ofbrain damagebut because I never could in myheart and mind feel the powerthat seemed to gently blind herwith joy through the final decades ofher time on this strangeearth and it's degrees of sufferingwith more peaceof mind in the face of theunanswered questionswe all have as stardustin the tangled web of thisuniverse;

but most of allI regret not calling mygrandmother all of theseyears, my hand now extendstoward the empty sky toher and the rest of my grandmothersin the Great Beyond where ice is probably plentifuland easily crushed bythe skulls of angels

Originally Appeared in East Jasmine Review

What Grandpa Left Behind

the backyard was allsplit shards of concreteand twisted metalsurrounding a batteredswing set I sat uponan old stove with ashesfrom a ten-year oldfire and a locked woodenshack stood decoratedwith black widowspider webs acrossall of his old tools--he was long dead,and he left the ruins of his ancient toysto no one.

Originally Appeared in Trailer Park Quarterly

My Mother's 1970 High School Yearbook

I would always pull it off of the bookshelf and get lost in itsfloods of mini skirts in mostly black and white with the occasionalcolor shots that made them all looklike they were on an old episodeof Love American Style: beautiful young women in curled hairteasing my loins thirty years in advance.

they made me want to jump into the pages of their yellow spine worn volume of other people’s hazy memories and disrupt the space time continuum bycoming face to mirrored face with mymother's two foot high beehive andscalp tickets for the Flying Burrito Brothersto girls who keep calling me "man" in the dying restroom smokeof drowned cigarettes in flushing toiletsbefore they ask me if I have any whites or reds and its these kinds of thingsthat help me to stop daydreaming and deal with the weirdness of my own time, and hopefully meet a girl along the waywho likes miniskirts.

Originally appeared in The Mas Tequila Review

Garage King

my grandfather convertedit into a pool hall in the 1960sand it's signature yellow shagcarpeting survived into the newmillennium. I returned to staytemporarily but have lingereda year or two longer than weexpected, T-Bone Walker'sbent strings howling out ofa stereo speaker while I pacearound the ancient billiards table in my underwear, readinga tabloid from 1973 that was recently found in the attic, it's pages crinkling into pieces of nostalgic dust that I inhale while it's ghosts pray for the moment I put on my pants and never return, leaving them to their after lives ina museum of the past I don't need to guard anymore.

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